everyone's got their own technique
by Domenic
Summary: TFP continuity. Mirroverse/Shattered Glass AU. "Need a medic's attention. Have information to trade. Bring medical kit to attached coordinates. Come alone. -Arcee"


**Title: everyone's got their own technique**

**Fandom: Transformers Prime**

**Summary: Mirroverse/Shattered Glass AU. **_**Need a medic's attention. Have information to trade. Bring medical kit to attached coordinates. Come alone. -Arcee**_

**A/N: I love how there's a lot of ways to think of SG Mirrorverse TFP. In one of my ideas, like my main idea really, besides trying to keep some canon personality traits intact while emphasizing others or just flipping them around, distorting, I...rather like the thought that SG Cons may think and behave sorta better than the canon Bots despite their grumbling. (And the SG Bots are sorta more efficient than the overall canon Cons, or a little more self-aware of some things.)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Transformers Prime.**

_"'If you two are done arguing,'" _Soundwave played back the recording of Knock Out's cheerful voice that immediately snapped out the real Knock Out and Breakdown from their current argument. The Communications Officer pointed to a screen, where a message icon flickered.

"Megatron?" Breakdown murmured hopefully, but his question was answered once Soundwave opened the message's text.

_Need a medic's attention. Have information to trade. Bring medical kit to attached coordinates. Come alone._

_-Arcee_

Immediately Knock Out's eyes narrowed. "I don't like it."

"At least she didn't actually try asking for Airachnid or Starscream," Breakdown pointed out.

The medic scoffed. "She's not stupid."

"No, she sounds desperate," Breakdown said.

"So you're buying this bullscrap?" Knock Out snapped.

_"'If you two are done arguing,'" _Soundwave interjected again, this time literally stepping in between Knock Out and Breakdown.

Breakdown vented a breath while Knock Out crossed his arms, both cooling down. Then Breakdown looked directly to Soundwave, "Any progress with intel on Arcee's status the whole time she's been AWOL —?"

The word flashed on Soundwave's mask-screen: _Negative_.

Turning back to Knock Out, Breakdown said, "Then this might be legit—"

Knock Out threw up his hands, growling. "Fine, let me just get my kit—"

"—while Shiv, Tovi and I check out the coordinates first—"

"—excuse me?" Knock Out said, dropping his hands and glaring at Breakdown.

"Like you haven't thought the whole time that it was a trap," Breakdown pointed out, even as Knock Out's glare intensified.

"Obviously, but you—"

"—have the right idea." Knock Out frowned, but waited for Breakdown to finish. "Look, this is the best option we have. Someone has to check things out first before letting you out."

Knock Out gave a short, bitter little laugh, shaking his head. "Like I'm some Earth domesticated canine..."

"You know what I mean—!" Breakdown snapped, frustration starting to boil over.

_**"'If you two are done arguing,'" **_Soundwave interjected a third time, remixing Knock Out's recording with some high-pitched distortion.

Breakdown deflated. Laserbeak left her place on Soundwave's chest to perch on Breakdown's shoulder. _Take Laserbeak with you_, Soundwave's mask-screen read.

Knock Out stiffly marched past Breakdown, but grumbled, "See you in a click?"

"Absolutely," Breakdown murmured back.

###

Arcee looked up from her wounded leg.

"What part of 'come alone' didn't you get, Con?!" She blinked. "And you're not a medic!"

"Medic's assistant," Breakdown said with a smirk. He nodded to the two other Troopers and the flyer drone perched on his shoulder, who all dispersed and began scouting the area.

Arcee scowled. "Right, like all of me and my fragged up leg can lay a trap for one height-challenged medic, let alone a band of scouts I wasn't expecting."

"When you really should have," Breakdown said. Then he gave a shrug. "What can I say, we're a paranoid bunch." The larger Con knelt down a distance away, observing the smaller Bot's wounds as closely as he could. "If it makes you feel any better, you're looking like the believable picture of pathetic. So, probably not a trap."

"Go frag yourself, Breakdown."

Arcee's eyes narrowed as the Troopers and the flyer drone returned to their commander's side, a quiet exchange passing between them.

Her eyes darted to the space beyond them, where a grounbridge activated. Stepping out was Knock Out—

"Well well, they _actually _let you off the ship now, Doc?" Arcee sneered.

—followed by Soundwave._ Scrap_.

Arcee managed to contain her panic, enough to notice Breakdown's fist clench and the way Knock Out smirked a little too tightly.

"What, touched a nerve?" Arcee said, flashing a vicious grin at the two probable lovers. _Her leg was killing her on top of her entire scrap-filled situation, why not share her misery any way she can? _"Trouble in paradise on the good ship Nemesis?"

The Con medic's smirk loosened a bit. "Not enough to get one kicked off the ship, unlike certain Autobot pariahs I know." His irritating voice had become almost sing-song at the end. Arcee frowned, gritting her dental plates as Knock Out approached, and Breakdown with him.

The ex-Bot noticed how the Cons kept a perimeter up: Soundwave guarding the area farthest out, the two Troopers at another, and even the small drone circling over its plot of land.

Knock Out knelt down at her side, and Arcee shot a glare at Breakdown looming above her, his weapons at the ready. "Is the bodyguard really still necessary?"

"Yes," Breakdown curtly said. A second later Knock Out told Arcee to remove her hands from the wound. Arcee's alarm instinctively spiked when the medic quickly pulled out a syringe, reminded of Ratchet.

"What are you—?"

"Just numbing it," Knock Out smoothly said, and he injected her, and immediately Arcee's wounded leg felt even more useless.

"So, what info you got?" Breakdown asked.

Arcee privately thought if she were somehow in these idiots' pedes she would've made sure the info was worth her time before agreeing to pay up, but whatever.

"Your leader's finally gone senile," Arcee said, meeting Breakdown's one eye. "Saw him with my own eyes at one of the Bot bases calling himself 'Megatronus.'"

"Well, _someone_'s out of the loop," Knock Out cheerfully said, his voice again verging on the lyrical.

Arcee's attention snapped back to the medic. "What? No way you already knew—"

_"'Soundwave's surveillance is quiet accurate, I can assure you,'" _the real Soundwave played back a recording of Megatron's gruff voice that made everyone else flinch.

"So, that all?" Breakdown again asked.

Arcee's mind raced, eyes darting from Breakdown's weapons at the ready, to Knock Out sealing her wound shut with a tool that Ratchet had shown could be easily turned violently against anyone, to the Troopers and the flyer drone and Soundwave surrounding her—

Soundwave behind the rest of the Cons so that only Arcee could see him. See his mask-screen read out:

_Have your wayward Arcee. Injured. Coordinates attached._

_Send:__Y__/N?_

One of Soundwave's long thin fingers was raised just below the threatening message on his mask-screen, held in a 'quiet' gesture.

Arcee understood the threat, and even the loophole: she'd asked for medical attention, she was receiving it, she never asked for any sort of protective silence. Arcee dared not acknowledge it all out loud, not with Soundwave clearly enough indicating he wanted this ultimatum kept between them, keeping his comrades unawares.

"Prime told 'Megatronus' that Soundwave was dead," Arcee said in a low voice.

"Really, we were at a _complete_ loss as to why all the Bots were practically lining up to take a shot at our Communications Officer," Knock Out said, sarcasm in full throttle.

"Where is Megatron?" Breakdown asked, urgent.

"The coordinates I have are useless now, they would've moved him by now—"

"Just give us what you have," Breakdown firmly said.

Arcee sarcastically sneered, "Sure it won't be a_ trap_—?"

"We can run our own security check," Breakdown said, again firm.

"And you have a pretty good record so far," Knock Out brightly said as he worked, and Arcee wondered if he could get anymore obnoxious. Oh, he was keeping up his medical end of the bargain, but he really could not shut up...

"Fine. Sending to Soundwave now."

_"'Got it,'"_ Soundwave said with a recording of Breakdown's voice, but that unsent message still appeared on his mask-screen.

Before Arcee could completely lose it, Breakdown again asked, "Anything else?"

"What more do you _want_?" Arcee snapped, hysteria starting to edge her voice.

"Galactic peace," Knock Out dryly said when he finally shut down his tool, Arcee's wound sealed.

"Um, Breakdown Sir—" One of the Troopers said, raising one timid hand up, and Arcee wanted to bang her head against the rock she leaned against. She'd been reduced to _this._

"Shiv, just spit it out," Breakdown said.

"Maybe the Bots' spacebridge—?"

"What about it?" Arcee snarled, pinning down the stupidly nervous Trooper with a glare.

It actually fraggin' flinched, and spilled out, "L-like where it is—?"

"They_ finished _the damn thing without me?!"

_"'Bingo, we have a winner!'" _The recording of Knock Out crackled out from Soundwave, and Arcee saw _Send: Y__/N__?_ on his mask-screen, and that message flicker out entirely.

Arcee vented a breath, and sent Soundwave those coordinates too.

###

Breakdown vented a breath once they were all back on the bridge intact and with some useful new information.

"Okay Sound, _what _did you do?"

Soundwave stared blankly back at him. _"'Stood around being intimidating, like he always does,'" _echoed a Starscream recording.

Breakdown sighed, and Knock Out shot him a concerned look out of the corner of his eye. Then he stepped toward Soundwave, flourishing a hand. "As you suggested, left your tracking device on Arcee."

Then Knock Out crossed his arms. "And I know it's pretty much part of your job to keep certain things under wraps, but—"

"What 'things under wraps?'" The real Starscream called out as he entered the bridge, flanked by Airachnid and Trooper Kavi.

"And what about Arcee?" Airachnid asked, brow arched.

"Oh, uh..." Breakdown started, but Soundwave clicked a panel and coordinates grew large on a screen. Having everyone's attention, his own mask-screen read, _Threatened Arcee with leaking her location and current injured state to Optimus Prime and his Autobots if she didn't divulge truly relevant intelligence._

Dead silence. And then Knock Out said, "Well, now that it's out in the open—"

"Save it for after we've been briefed on _what the frag just happened_!" Starscream snapped, claws curling into fists.

Another bout of silence. Airachnid glanced to Starscream, then back to Soundwave's own party that had dealt with Arcee. "We found nothing," she explained.

"Absolutely nothing, so I dearly hope you truly did find something relevant," Starscream growled.

Soundwave nodded, and began playing back an edited recording summarizing the whole event.

_fin_


End file.
